With the demand for quality, comfort and aesthetic beauty regulating all aspects of automobile construction and design, including the vehicle's interior, automobile manufacturers have responded by decorating an automobile's interior floor board with a unitary piece of carpet having a size and configuration to cover the entire floor board of at least the front portion of the passenger compartment of an automobile. This "wall-to-wall" look is pleasing to the eye but expensive to replace, especially in instances in which only a small portion of the unitary carpet piece becomes worn such as when a driver's feet have eroded the carpet in the vicinity of the brake and accelerator pedals. Accordingly, manufacturers have designed disposable automotive carpet pads which may be placed onto those critical areas of the carpeted floor board subject to the most wear, i.e. where the driver's and passenger's feet normally rest.
These carpet pads prolong the useful life of an automotive carpet but are sometimes of little protective use, especially where, upon a driver's or passenger's entry or exit from an automobile, the pad is skidded or shifted out of the desired protective covering relation to the desired areas of the automotive carpet. This shifting of a carpet pad can also be hazardous, especially if the carpet pad is pushed too far under an accelerator pedal such as to cause the accelerator to stick. to remedy this problem, various pad designs have been attempted heretofore which, either by the pad design itself or the pad working in conjunction with another apparatus, would aid in preventing the shifting of a pad relative to the carpet therebeneath. For example, some known automotive carpet pads are designed with the upper face on one side of the pad having a carpet face thereon and the other or underside thereof having a number of elastomeric projections thereon which engage the automotive carpet therebeneath.
Other types of pads have been proposed which use a series of stiff bristles formed or positioned on the underside of the pad. When the pad is positioned over the automotive carpet, the stiff bristles engage the carpet to aid in preventing pad slippage. Examples of such designs are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,361,610 and 4,481,240 to Roth. These stiff bristles may be integrally formed on the underside of the carpet pad, or as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,240, the bristles may be integrally formed on a plurality of retaining devices with the retaining devices spaced around the perimeter of the carpet pad underside. However, these designs have not proven to be satisfactory to prevent the carpet pad from shifting during those periods in which an individual is getting into and out of an automobile.
Various other forms of attaching means have been proposed heretofore, but to my knowledge none of the known attaching means have proven entirely satisfactory to effectively restrain the protective carpet pad against shifting relative to the automobile carpet.
With the foregoing in mind, it is an object of this invention to provide an automobile floor covering having a carpet pad attaching means effective to prevent a carpet pad having downwardly extending projections on its backside, from shifting out of its desired placed relationship overlying the automobile carpet.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automobile carpet pad attaching means which is localized in an area of the automobile carpet corresponding to that area of the carpet upon which the driver's heel would rest when operating the accelerator of the automobile.